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Along the finnish railway
The question of the railway construction in Finland became very important in the middle of the 1930s, after Stephenson’s train had started from Manchester to Liverpool. On March 20, 1849 colonel Shtirnval, the head of the Transport Department of Grand Duchy, offered the first real draft of railroad construction. On March 4, 1857 the Emperor signed a supreme dictate dedicated to the construction of the Helsinki–Hameenlinna and St. Petersburg–Vyborg–Turku lines. The building of the railroad from the station Riihimaki to Petersburg was begun on January 3, 1868. It was put up at record time. It took 2 years and a half to build it. The first train from St. Petersburg to Pargolovo started on June 22, 1869. The trunk–line was completed with locomotives ordered in England. Sleeping coaches built at a factory in Helsingfors were comfortable. Passengers could pass the train from the first carriage to the last. The voyage wasn’t very cheap, but the prices were rather democratic. The prices to night trains were higher: there were sleeping coaches with the linen. Special carriages were built for the voyages of the Imperial family. They were kept in a special depot at the Finland station. The Finns have managed to conserve three imperial wagons. Nowadays they are exposed in the Finnish Railway Museum in Hyvinkaa. All Russian railways used to possess imperial trains, but none of them has been preserved in Russia. The Finnish railway was served by the Finns in blue caps and uniform jackets. In Beloostrov there were Russian gendarmes, but in Teroki there was a Finnish policeman dressed in a coat with light buttons. He had a black helmet and a backsword with white metal decoration. Passengers used Russian and Finnish money.
Though the railroad crossed Russian territory, it was controlled by the Finnish Railway Department. The main building office was in Helsingfors. The line was a private railway in relation to the Russian Railway Ministry. Generally, the construction on Russian territory was held according to local work contracts, but the drafts were made by Finnish engineers. Local contracts weren’t successful: the work was of bad quality. That’s why the Finnish Railway Department prefered to build without Russian help except for station houses in St. Petersburg and Vyborg built according to Russian tenders. The main station of the way was St. Petersburg one. It must be respectable station of international standard. It was built to the draft of civil engineer P. Kupinsky, an architect of the Railway Ministry, author of several station buildings of the second half of XIX. Wooden houses along the line were built on the territory of Finland to the projects of Knut Nulander. Volmar Vestling, who had received education at the Helsinki Polytechnical University, constructed all the station houses from Vamelimeki to St. Petersburg. According to a member of the railway construction, the station buildings were put up in simple and practical style, boarded and painted in oil and ornamented, without luxury. First of all, they must be comfortable. The sights of the region are connected with the name of Alexander Blok. There is a preserved residence building at the station. Left to it there is a building of Ozerky station. Blok used to visit it. We read in his diary: "We go to the Finland railway station, from Udelnaya we go to Colomyagi, wherefrom to Ozerky, pass above the lake and drink coffee at Primorsky station, return by tram". Udelnaya, Ozerky, Shuvalovo were busy summer settlements with theatres, dances and boat sailing. The New Shuvalovo Theatre appeared just there. It had concert halls and cinemas, a restaurant and a merchant Direnkov’s garden. Summer houses on the Finnish territory were rather cheep; Russian nobility lived there. V. Mayakovsky V. Meyerkhold, F. Shalyapin used to visit the popular holiday places. Funny holiday life got tragic notes in 1914, when German landing troops were expected in Finland. In 1917 the Sestra river became the frontier of two unfriendly states. The Soviet side of the frontier bridge was painted red, the Finnish one was white. After the Second World War the state frontier between the Soviet Union and Finland moved: the USSR got considerable part of Finnish territories. The shore of the Gulf of Finland regained its fame of popular summer holiday place.
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